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Doppelganger

A Trip into the Mirror World

Naomi Klein

$36.99

Paperback

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English
Allen Lane
12 September 2023
A wild ride into the uncanny mirror world of our polarised culture, from the international bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine

What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired a double? Someone almost like you, and yet not you at all?

When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable?

To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world- one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting 'the children'). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.

This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It's for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.

By:  
Imprint:   Allen Lane
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 30mm
Weight:   502g
ISBN:   9780241621318
ISBN 10:   0241621313
Pages:   352
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  ELT Advanced ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of international bestsellers including This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, No Is Not Enough, and On Fire, which have been published in more than thirty-five languages. She is an associate professor in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, the founding co-director of UBC's Centre of Climate Justice, and an honorary professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers University. Her writing has appeared in leading publications around the world, and she has just launched a regular column for The Guardian.

Reviews for Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

There is something hopeful in this project, in its sheer intellectual ambition and range, its effort to pick apart and decipher the absurdities and ironies of our political derangement, which almost no other writer could pull off. If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one. * New York Times * The lucidity of Klein’s prose and the ease with which she weaves together cultural analysis (looking at the theme doppelganger in art, film and literature), political commentary and personal reflection makes this a deeply compelling read, one which feels urgent and necessary as we enter yet another period of political strife. In Doppelganger, Klein gives shape and context to that apocalyptic mindset – and implores us to offer up an alternative. * Evening Standard * Klein ties it all together into what we seem to be lacking as individuals: a cohesive whole. Doppelganger is both timely and timeless, a work in a grand tradition. [A] spirited guide — a source of fact-based understanding, if not always solace. * LA Times * Like your smartest friend guiding you through a rather knotty personal conundrum that just happens to involve the most pressing issues of our age. * Irish Independent * This book is as foreboding as a guide through the maze of mirrors of the modern right should be. But it's not only that: Naomi Klein has made Doppelganger gripping and scintillating, too. The result is a reckoning with the present moment that's as insightful as all Klein's indispensable work, and as suspenseful as a novel. -- China Mieville Naomi Klein never disappoints. Doppelganger swirls through the bewildering ideas of the ultra-right that often appear as a distorted mirror of left struggle and strategy. With her always incisive analysis of the systems and structures linked to global capitalism, Klein now fiercely and brilliantly urges that our justice movements be prepared to follow the quest for new meaning into dimensions where we might least expect to find it: in injury and vulnerability. -- Angela Y. Davis I finished this book and nearly cried with relief, Klein gave me the gift of being calm. She explores and diagnoses with empathy, warmth and searing precision the confusion and utter madness of what it is to be alive right now. This is a big book with big ideas which poses the most direct questions for our times. Everyone needs to read it as a matter of urgency. -- Sheena Patel This will be remembered as Naomi Klein's true master work: the ultimate expression of our collective crisis, told through the necessarily subjective lens of human experience ... With the benefit of Naomi Klein's journey through the crucible of self-annihilation, we can understand everything from Covid conspiracies to climate denialism in a new light. A triumph. -- Douglas Rushkoff Once a decade, Naomi Klein writes a book that prompts us to completely rethink the moment we're in. If you want to understand where we are now - and how to find our way back to sanity - you have to read this totally brilliant book. -- Johann Hari If you want to make sense of a world upside-down, this staggering masterpiece will show you how - and then it blazes a path to a more loving and caring future. -- V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues Klein's prose is tight and urgent ... evoking both laughter and dismay and entrancingly matching the mounting frenzy of seeing your public self morph into someone else ... [Klein's] comprehensive and nuanced treatments of these issues are valuable and compelling ... A disarming and addictive call to solidarity. * Kirkus * [A] striking meditation . . . Klein's writing is perceptive and intriguingly personal . . . By articulating such an expansive view of the uncanny, Klein's mesmerizing narrative reflects the unique anxieties and modes of analysis that have come to dominate the online era. Like Klein's previous books, it's a definitive signpost of the times. * Publishers Weekly *


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